Practical behavioural first aid for rabbits

Rabbits may have been farmed for many centuries but domestication only started about 1500 years ago. This process has enhanced many behaviours, but as selective breeding has been over a relatively short period of time, rabbits do retain a lot of their ‘wild’ behaviour patterns. Understanding this is crucial when looking at pet rabbits.

First and foremost rabbits are a prey animal. They are constantly on the alert and looking for danger — and are well adapted for this with wide-spaced eyes giving them near all-round vision (Bourne, 2011). Once startled, given a choice they freeze and, if necessary, run.

Rabbits live in collections of small social groups (just a male and female or a harem of two or three males and four or five females) which together form a colony of potentially over a 100 individuals. This colony will have a warren consisting of interconnecting burrows with lots of escape routes, and although they share a common home range, each group will defend its own territory within the warren (Magnus, 2006). Rabbits rarely leave a group once they have had the chance to breed and the females usually stay in their birth group for life. The males have a hierarchy so the juveniles tend to migrate, which is actively encouraged by the adults. The females live in a state of mutual acceptance outside the breeding season. During this time though, they are more aggressive than the males.